i'm a winner!

every day i've been entering to win various prizes over at give away today. if it's things for baby boys or girls i pick something i would want to give to sam or abby. i never expected to actually win (and i usually have to remind myself to scroll down and see who won), but i won!! the giveaway was for items from baby bonkin.

this is the blanket i picked for sam:

what a fun surprise to come home to!

oscar bingo!

tonight jeremy, oscar and i are going to watch the academy awards, eat popcorn, and play oscar bingo.



p.s. my oscar is cuter.. here he is starring as batman.

update: neither of us actually got bingo, but we counted the blocks we got and i had more, so i won by one. i think the highlight of the evening was oscar saying "mickey rourke!" and clapping. this might be the first time i've watched the whole show, playing the bingo with jeremy actually made it tons of fun, and we're planning on a repeat next year.

dino-licious

seeing this makes me want to throw out plans for a very hungry caterpillar birthday party and have a dinosaur birthday instead! i guess there's always next year..

via

parmesan don knots

i saw this recipe on allrecipes.com a couple weeks ago. i think there was a picture of it in the photo contest.. anyway, i decided to make them for our valentine's eve dinner. they were yummy and easy.. i made them again tonight. somehow we started calling them parmesan don knots or sometime barney fifes..

success!

the breastfeeding class was wonderful! we were worried there would be no people, and then we were also worried there would be more people than we'd prepared for.. we had 5 (which was perfect). we played breastfeeding bingo and gave away the i heart breastmilk tshirt. we munched on cheese ball, muffins and cookies. we sipped pineapple punch. we gave out questionnaires for them to fill out so that we would know how we did and got wonderful responses. i feel like i helped people and that was why i wanted the job in the first place. now i'm trying to talk kristen into adding another hour after the class to have a support group and invite breastfeeding mom's to come chit chat. maybe if we had done that i wouldn't have a billion cookies and muffins left...

i forgot to take my camera with me - boo! so the only picture i have is of the muffins. i bought a mini muffin pan, because mini muffins are just so darn cute.

daffodils from my darling

jeremy picks me daffodils for valentine's day every year and i love them! (he also makes me cards that are so sweet that i cry) i dont know how i got so lucky.

sweet treat

these cherry filled chocolate wafers are one of the sweet treats that i made for valentine's day. i think i first saw it here. since our walmart didnt have either of the cookies they suggested, i had to use oreo cakesters, which i would not recommend. they tasted weird to me, and the dessert was only saved by the fact that the cherry whipped topping was so good. i think next year i'll try again using something else for the chocolate layers.

the boys enjoyed it.. jeremy agreed with me about the weirdness of the oreo cakesters.

oscar tried to stuff it all in his face at once

if you get the cherries with stems, you get to try to tie the stem in a knot with your tongue. also, i had a ton of the cherry whipped cream left, so we put some in our hot cocoa last night - it was wonderful.

freezer fun

jeremy always writes silly stuff on the food he wraps up. here is some entertainment from our freezer:

this is the first package i wrapped.. jeremy told me to make sure there was no places that the frosties could get in.. i guess he thought i went a little overboard with the tape...

busy day

since i was a bit under the weather yesterday, i didnt get anything useful done, so today i:

made lemon bars for the breastfeeding class on monday

made meringues for the breastfeeding class on monday (this was a slight disaster... my oven runs hot, so i turned it lower than the recipe called for, but they still got a little too done.. i thought i'd try another batch, but stopped to answer the phone while beating in the sugar and the next thing i know i've got white soup. i ended up dumping it on a pan to cook anyway.. and i spelled out 'i love you' and baked that for jeremy.) now i have a bowl full of egg yolks.. what can i do with them?

i also made a few heart meringues for jeremy.. aren't they cute?

somewhere between batch 1 and batch 2 of meringues i worked on a few valentine's

and made myself headband to wear for valentine's day

i also fed, diapered and kept two boys out of trouble and cooked some venison fajitas for dinner. and watched juno.

an auntie again!

welcome to samuel robert nordstrom!

(i'm the luckiest aunt in the world!)

what a cutie!

sunday picnic

we finally had some weather nice enough for a picnic this weekend, so we got to try out the picnic basket that we got for christmas. actually, oscar's very first picnic was feb 10th last year, so it's been almost a year. we went to the same spot at turkey fork again this time.

here we are driving..

oscar decided that we should play catch.. he marched over and got the ball out of the bag.

even though he was about to fall asleep right before we got there, he still had lots of fun. it makes me sad that we dont have a yard for him to play in.. he loves being outside.

jeremy took this picture by the lake.. isnt it cool? the sky fell in the lake...

looking at shells

tackling leftovers

saturday night we had reubens to try to use up some of the gigantic jar of sauerkraut that i bought for the super bowl party (what i was i thinking? that thing is huge!). i wasn't sure what oscar would think about his sandwich, but he ate it all! they were just so tasty that i thought i'd share.

i <3 cookies

i made a batch (or two) of our traditional valentine cookies on friday - one of the best parts of valentine's day! so while oscar and aaron played and made a big mess all over the apartment, i played and made a big mess all over the kitchen. i love that this recipe doesnt require anything that i dont normally keep on hand...

i also did a few that weren't so traditional...

To My Valentine Oatmeal Cookies

Granny used to make these every year after she cut the recipe out of the newspaper

2 1/2 C. flour

2 T. Milk

1 tsp. baking powder

1 egg

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

3/4 C. sugar

1 C. oats

3/4 C. butter or margarine

1) Sift dry ingredients into bowl

2) Add butter, sugar, milk, egg and vanilla; beat until combined, about 2 min.

3) Add oats and mix well

4) Roll to 1/4 inch thick and cut into hearts

5) bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350o (moderate) 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned.

6) frost with a glaze made from confectioners sugar, vanilla, red food coloring, and enough milk to make a spreading consistency.

valleytimes

the other night i decided to drag out all my crafting whatnots so we could start working on valentines. we made our mailboxes, as we do every year. this year oscar did some painting and loved it. birthday idea for oscar: large supply of white paper to paint on. he even painted more the next day (followed by a suspicious rash - hopefully not from his watercolors).

i've got mail

last week i ordered a few things from noodle soup and they showed up at my door today! now i've got stickers, buttons and a few magnets that i can give to my favorite breastfeeding clients. the tshirt is going to be a prize at our breastfeeding class on the 16th. we'll be handing out folders with information in them, and one will have this cute little shirt in it.

tasty treats

i'm trying out some different things to make for the breastfeeding class on the 16th. tonight i made some lemon poppy seed muffins (from a martha white mix - i'm aiming for tasty and easy) and put some lemon glaze on top. all participating taste testers have approved. i also have a blueberry cheesecake muffin mix that i'm going to try.


also, oscar had a well baby visit today with dr. siew. he's 28lbs and 33 1/2 in long, which is average for his age. he said everything looks good and oscar got a big elmo sticker which got ripped before we even made it out to the car.

have a heart

today i used some of the pretty new paper that i got for christmas and replaced our super bowl garlands with some hearts.

super bowl party

yesterday was our long awaited super bowl party. we did 'hot dogs across america'. i made super bowl xliii sign for on the wall, along with some photos and descriptions of hot dog styles found around the country. the main four were pheonix, pittsburgh, chicago and new york. i also used the scraps from the signs to make garlands for the windows and various places around the room.

there was tons of food. i made football cupcakes and football crispy treats. i also bought a couple packs of squirty bottles and printed some labels for them. the food and decorations worked out great, but our planning on the other end had a few problems.. we didnt have the time of the super bowl right, so our party started more than an hour into the game. AND our cable had been messed up all day. i spent half the day on the phone with the cable guy. we finally got to watch part of the game and had a great time, despite the screw up!